System Certified Supervillain

“Tori,” Tiff said stiffly. “That’s a rat.”

“Yeah, I see this.”

“A really big rat,” Tiff said, her pulse picking up.

“Yes, I see this.” Victoria ground out through gritted teeth.

“And it’s getting bigger, Tori!”

“You know, Tiff, right now is really not the time!”

​

The rat didn’t die despite impaling itself on a needle. As the liquid flowed into the creature, it writhed, squirming and thrashing and screeching in pain, but it didn’t seem to be in the midst of death throes. In fact, as Tiff watched, its muscles bulged with each spasm, morphing into a grotesque mockery of biology and animal flesh. It stopped being a rat almost immediately and was now approaching the size and ferocity of a Rottweiler.

Whatever the liquid in the syringe was made the rat bigger, faster, stronger…better. Its once-beady eyes were now crazed and bloodshot, filled with the lust for violence and an insatiable hunger. It seemed to understand that Tiff and Victoria were alive, even if it couldn’t correctly categorize them as threats. Its nostrils flared, the bent and twisted whiskers on its nose jutting out at odd, broken angles, its snout scrunched up, and it bared its jagged teeth. It hissed with the ferocity of a lion and leaped at the closest target.

“Holy shit!”

Tiff knew Victoria was fast, but the mutated rodent might be even faster. It moved like a blur, skittering on the floor one second and latched onto Victoria’s left arm the next, chomping down on her limb with its massive fangs, trying to bite through. Fortunately, Victoria's armor was strong, and while the teeth didn’t pierce the material, it did make a horrible, high-pitched screeching whine like metal grating across metal.

“Get it off, get it off!” Tiff shouted, even though she wasn’t the one being bitten. A sort of primal empathy made her deeply wish for that thing to be nowhere near her sister.

“I’m trying, I’m trying!” Victoria yelled back.

Victoria wasn’t idle. As soon as the rat latched on, forcing her back due to its increased mass, she retaliated. At first she swung her arm to the side, trying to throw it off, but it was latched on hard. It started clawing erratically as gravity dragged it down, its jaws the only thing keeping it in the air. Frustrated and slightly stumped, Victoria did the only thing she could think of: she punched it.

Hard.

Repeatedly.

“Die, you sonuvabitch! Die!”

She brought her gauntleted hand down into its face over and over. The first strike met slight resistance against a freshly reinforced rat skull, but the second broke through bone with a sickening crunch, and the third sounded like a butcher tenderizing meat, wet and pulpy.

And yet the rat was lodged.

Tiff could see one eye turn slightly unfocused even as the ruin of the other leaked blood and a vile, greenish fluid all over Victoria, spilling onto the floor. Where it hit the concrete…it started to smoke and steam.

“Tori!” Tiff cried uselessly. She was no good here; in fact, she was deeply regretting coming along at all. Right now, all she was was a distraction, a hindrance for her sister. As soon as the rat realized she was easier prey, Victoria's job would get much, much harder.

“The hell?!” Victoria gasped, redoubling her efforts to dislodge the giant rat. She ran over to the safe, the rodents dangling impotently as it gnashed furiously, and started swinging her arm around wildly. She bashed the creature against the safe, and though its entire head resembled a pound of hamburger, it still fought on. Like something refused to let it die.

Each strike crushing its body against the heavy metal box earned a squeal of pain from deep inside the rat’s throat. On the third bash, its teeth finally broke, and, unable to gain purchase with its bloody, slippery gums, it slid off. Victoria lost no time and immediately began stomping on it until it stopped moving.

The room went still as Victoria’s chest heaved heavily, and Tiff barely dared to breathe.

“Is it over?” She asked. “Tori, what was that?! Why did the rat mutate?!”

“You know as much about it as I do- Tiff! Wait!”

Tiff crept closer to get a better look at the disgusting creature. She wasn’t the biggest fan of rats in the first place; she’d never choose to keep one as a pet and they didn’t make her top ten list. She could understand why some people might like them; people were weird and allowed to have bizarre tastes, but nothing about the thing on the ground could ever be called cute or endearing. It was hideous, and that was before Victoria caved its face in.

A fate that the monster seemed to reject…as pieces of bone grew like frost etching over a window, reforming from a million fractured shards; tissue bubbled like boiling water as flesh inflated and knit itself together. An eyeball reformed itself and instantly locked onto Victoria, its gaze full of hate.

“Oh hell no! I’m not dealing with no respawning rat from hell! You die! You die now!!”

Before Tiff could scurry away across the room, her sister lunged forward, crouched down with a mighty grunt, and lifted the safe off the ground. She let out a ferocious roar as she brought it over her head…and cratered it into the cement with all the fury of a falling star. The safe, a box easily 4 feet tall and wide, was made of solid steel. The rat…was gone. All that remained was the echo of a pained squeal and part of the tail, writhing where it was severed from the body. A thin pool of blood began oozing toward the drain.

Victoriai stood up, took a shaky breath…and cackled maniacally. She made a fist with her right hand, stuck her middle finger up, and shoved it in the safe’s direction.

“Eat shit, asshole!”

Tiff…was stunned.

This was not at all what she expected to find when she had the grand idea of busting down a drug cartel. She’d envisioned thugs in bandas, fighting over duffel bags filled with powdery white bricks, or maybe some guys in fedoras with Tommy guns.

Not…a 4-foot-long, 3-foot-tall, mutated horror show with clumps of hair falling out and bloated, uneven muscles stretched across exposed ligaments.

But before Tiff could come to her senses and consider losing her lunch, Victoria straightened and went rigid.

“Oh no,” Tiff gasped, “Is it still alive?! How?”

Victoria gave her the classic hand-wave-over-the-throat action signifying cut it out. She pointed at her ear and Tiff understood. That’s right, she was on a call with their dad!

“Control,” Victoria said, “I’m going to need you to repeat that. I think my headset’s damaged. Actually, I’m going to put you on speaker. Go again?”

She raised her arm (the one the rat had used as a chew toy), and Tiff could see heavy gouges and slashes, but the suit wasn’t pierced. That was good…but now Tiff worried about how they'd repair it if it ever did break. A panel popped up like a little info-tablet and Rick’s voice came through, loud and clear.

“-advised, Police are on their way. Time’s up; you need to leave, now. Repeat: the cops are coming, so finish up whatever you were there to do, pack it up and get out. That thing set off all the alarms, so the DMA is also coming. That place is going to be crawling with Supers any minute, so get out of there!”

“Alarms?” Victoria said, her voice tinted with confusion. “I didn’t hear anything. Didn’t we check for a security system before-”

“Who do you think called it in, V?!” Her dad’s frustrated, exasperated voice yelled out. Tiff’s eyes went wide; of course he’d be angry. If he saw everything…and she did mean everything, including her stunt upstairs, he’d be pissed! “You’re on the clock, go!”

Victoria instantly calmed down, flushing all other emotions out of her body in a single, deep breath. She turned to Tiff, who was still staring at the safe and half expecting a mutant rat to crawl out of the door.

“You heard him,” she said coolly, thrusting her thumb over her shoulder back at the staircase. “Time to jet.”

“Ah,” Tiff snapped out of it. “We can’t go yet! We need those drugs!”

“Boss, there’s no time,” Victoria ground out. “We gotta go!”

“I did not come all this way to leave empty-handed,” Tiff said with a huff, tugging on the safe’s door. It was still unlocked, but all the jostling and slamming it into the ground tweaked its hinges. It was stuck and wouldn’t budge.

“Didn’t you hear…?” Victoria started to ask. She put a hand on Tiff’s shoulder and she probably would have picked her up, giant dress and all, if Rick hadn’t spoken up.

“T might be right,” he said. “Grab what you can and bounce. Somebody’s got to analyze that serum and I don’t know if I trust the DMA to release their findings. If you can get that door open, grab a vial and get out!”

Victoria shifted her hand from Tiff’s shoulder to the handle of the safe. She gripped it as hard as she could (visibly deforming the bar in her hand)...and pulled it straight off. She stared at it numbly for a second, then threw it down, squeezed her fingers into the open crack, and yanked the door apart.

When they first looked into the safe using the TAS, there’d been 5 units. One got used up injecting into the rat and two were broken. The viscous ooze glowed blue faintly, but it was clearly losing some of its luster. Maybe it couldn’t handle being out in the open air? That left two intact vials.

Victoria once again reached into her pouch of wonders and pulled out a small black pouch. She quickly stuffed the two vials inside and handed it to Tiff.

“Hold this,” she said firmly. Tiff obeyed instantly. Hardly had she wrapped her hands around it when Victoria leaned in so close Tiff nearly recoiled. “Time…too…go!”

Victoria reached around, grabbed as much of Tiff and the dress as she could…and hiked her up into a classic princess carry. Tiff squawked slightly, but in the grand scheme of things, she’d much rather get the princess treatment than the sack of potatoes over-the-shoulder throw.

Her cargo secure, Victoria bounded to the door. She paused in front of the spiral staircase, giving Tiff just enough time to look back at the ruins of the basement.

What a bizarre turn of events.

Victoria’s fight with the rodent had lasted a handful of seconds, maybe a full minute or two tops. And yet, the entire basement was wrecked. The medical bed, in the middle of the room, was smashed to pieces; debris had flown in every direction. The work table was similarly crushed, having taken a giant rat to the face when Victoria flailed it around…though somehow, the poor fluorescent light was miraculously untouched.

Of course, the safe was now in ruins, and anything that might have been useful information in their investigation was completely destroyed. Even the mysterious vials of glowy-blue-goo were somewhat useless. Yes, Tiff wanted to secure them, and she still thought grabbing them was the right play…but what would they actually do with them? Tiff wasn’t a scientist and most of her family specialized in punching things.

And no matter how hilarious or useful it might sound, she couldn’t punch answers out of science.

Most likely, they were entirely up to the mercy of whatever contacts Rick had and how much they trusted an outside party with incredibly dangerous materials.

Tiff was brought forcibly back to the moment as soon as Victoria started climbing the stairs. Her dress, as uncompromising as ever, refused to bend the proverbial knee to something as lowly and common as drywall. But Victoria was strong, leaving the plaster as the weakest link in the chain. The dress left deep gouges on the outer spiral as they climbed and Tiff cringed.

Unsurprisingly, the dress was resilient and repelled the white dust that threatened to tarnish its black-and-crimson splendor. As Victoria exited the hidden nook, Tiff could see the damage, and it wasn’t pretty. The owners would probably need to hire a very thorough contractor if they wanted a full restoration.

But then again, with the surprise rodent problem in their newfound basement, they might want to consider tenting the house for fumigation and telling the exterminators to move forward with extreme prejudice.

Speaking of the owners…they were gone. Nowhere to be seen and the front door was wide open. Tiff couldn’t blame them for fleeing; it was the smartest move. No amount of verbal agreements would keep a person in place when sounds from the basement suggested somebody was performing a demonic summoning ritual.

Victoria didn’t tarry. With Tiff firmly lodged in her arms, she ran all the way back to the Camry, just in the nick of time. Tiff could hear sirens wailing on the wind, growing closer with every passing second. But Victoria kept her cool. Instead of revving the engine, flooring it and peeling out as they made their getaway, she first unsummoned her armor. She let the engine turn, whining as it always did when it felt grumpy, and pulled onto the street, carefully matching the speed limit. They’d hardly gone two blocks and were pulling up to a stop sign when two large, black SUVs bearing the crest of the DMA barreled around the corner, quickly followed by two plain black-and-whites with their lights flashing.

They didn’t even pause to glance at Tiff, safely seated in the back of the Camry: the Dark Queen making her quiet escape.

​

---

Detective Jon Wyatt had seen many things in his long and storied career. He started as a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed [Beat Cop] for the Buena Park Police Department almost 35 years ago, and ever since then, it felt like the world was steadily slipping into darkness.

Some days, it was worse. Like the void of space opened up and all the “charity of the human soul” was sucked into a great black hole, compressed into nothingness, gone forever.

Which, of course, suggested it was “there” to begin with…and, as much as the last few years had put a ton of city-miles onto Jon’s face, he wasn’t as much of a pessimist as he looked. Not everything was doom and gloom, and not everyone was a rat scurrying to jump off a sinking ship as it burned into the ocean.

No, Jon was a realist. He liked facts, which was one reason he became a detective in the first place. If he’d been swayed by power like so many of his peers, he probably wouldn’t have made it much further than a [Patrol Officer]. Those [DIA] guys were sharp…smarter than a rookie, anyway.

Sitting behind a desk wasn’t his first choice, but his hands were tied because he wanted to do some real good in the world. After he found out the [Lieutenant] was having an affair with the [Captain]’s wife, he decided dealing with Metahuman bullshit was better for his long-term health. He transferred to the DMA’s Major Crimes Unit in Anaheim, focusing on Capes, Cowls, and all the little things that fell through the cracks, making everyone else’s lives miserable.

Jon wasn’t delusional, either. He wasn’t a Hero and he knew it. He didn’t have powers, for one, and he didn’t have the “upstanding moral fiber” required to keep him on the straightest of narrows. Technically, he was a Sidekick, since he had more white on the Greyscale than black, but he never used the title as a badge. He already had one of those, clipped to his belt right next to his holster.

As for what dragged him away from the busy streets of downtown Anaheim to the sunny suburbs of Hacienda…Jon wasn’t ready to make a decisive statement yet. He didn’t like spouting nonsense for the press to run a sensationalized piece capitalizing on whatever the newest fad or flop was; statements required thought. And good thought required facts. And there was no better way to verify those facts than looking into them himself.

Today’s investigation was a not-so-simple burglary case. Nothing was ever as cut and dry as he’d like, which was probably for the best, because as much as the System wanted to align everything to a colorless spectrum, the world wasn’t black and white. Every story had a second side, and if he didn’t do his job, that might never come to light. Loud voices were easy to hear; little details might get missed…and in an investigation, details mattered.

Such as: why did the initial report come from registered Techie, working for a Hero Company based out of Setma Heights? Why was a Meta so far outside his normal operating zone, and why didn’t he contact the local police first? Hacienda’s PD had gotten noise complaints and then an angry call blathering about witches and dark knights, so they were slow to respond. It sounded like a hoax, and they treated it like one, but as soon as his department got the call and started fishing around for what Hacienda knew, they kicked it into gear. Maybe that’s why the Techie called the DMA? He knew something was up and wanted it taken care of pronto.

But why not send his team? Unless they were already engaged…or maybe he was working off the books.

Jon shook his head. Now wasn’t the time for speculation. He needed to know the truth, and for that, he needed facts.

He pulled up to the address at 5:39 p.m., and the report came in at 4:57. A little over 30 minutes and the first crews to show up hadn’t been idle. The whole street was blocked off and most of the [Rookies] were busy keeping the curious neighbors on their sides of the grass. Two vans were there, but they weren’t cuffing anybody, so whoever started this nonsense must have gotten away. To the right, sitting in the back of one of the SUVs were a pair of Citizens, likely the owners of the home that’d been broken into. A [Patrolman] was getting their statements, but he’d go over there in a minute. For the moment, he decided to approach the house.

“Identification?” A female officer asked him as he stepped forward. Police tape could only do so much and there were only 20 cops to keep away about 50 lookie-loos. Jon wore only a white button-up with a tie and jeans, so he could have been just about anybody. But he knew the officer caught sight of his standard-issue and his badge, so she was just doing her job.

“D-3488, Detective Jon Wyatt, Major Crimes Unit,” he said, handing over his badge. The woman took it, glanced at it long enough to know it wasn’t plastic, and handed it back.

“Thank you. Sorry, Detective. This case doesn’t seem right; something’s got all the locals spooked. Can’t take too many chances, you know?”

“Shouldn’t take any chances,” Jon replied. “But that’s an interesting thought. Got anything for me?”

“Doesn’t look like standard breaking and entering at first,” the officer said with a sigh. “Most of the time, breaking requires something to be broken.”

“I take it there’s no signs of forced entry?” Jon asked with a raised brow. The officer shook her head.

“Not outside. Inside’s a different story. Somebody broke down a wall to get to a staircase. You’d think if somebody was hiding something in a wall, it’d be more valuable.”

“Maybe it is,” Jon said. “What’s down below?”

“Don’t know,” the [Officer] sighed. “I’m on door duty. Got the owners over by the vans; maybe check them out?”

“Will do, thanks.”

Turning around, he saw one of his [Patrolmen] stationed by the SUVs and squad cars, watching over what had to be the homeowners. A middle-aged couple; the man looked tired and scared, but mostly embarrassed for his wife.

The woman, on the other hand, was harassing the [Patrolman]. She seemed to be the kind of busybody who had an opinion on everything, and she wasn’t happy unless she was sharing it with you.

And by sharing, Jon assumed shoving it down your throat.

He made sure to listen in as he approached.

“I’m telling you,” the woman drawled, “It was a witch. A vampire witch! And a black knight! They barged into my home, started knocking down walls, and then, for all I know, started summoning Satan in the basement! My God, you should have heard the noises coming from down there! I’ve watched Better Homes and Gardens, and I saw a special on how they make sausage. I’ve heard a pig squeal! Let me tell you, buddy, there’s no pig like that here on earth! That witch lady must have summoned something up she couldn’t control, and she had to use her knight to put it down! In my house, no less! The nerve of some people!”

The nerve, indeed, Jon sighed to himself. He cleared his throat loudly and sat down on the bumper of the SUV across from them.

“Good afternoon. I’m Detective Jon Wyatt with the DMA MCU. And you are?”

“Annoyed!” The woman complained loudly. So this was how it was going to go, was it? “What are you going to do about our house, alphabet man? You’re a police officer, right? Have you caught the giant knight and the vampire in the ball gown?”

“Ex…cuse me?” Jon asked, very much taken aback. “This is the first I’m hearing of a giant knight or a vampire.”

“What good are you?” The woman sassed. “Where’s our tax dollars going, if the police can’t catch a woman in a uselessly huge gown? My Gawd, how do you even walk in that thing? It had to be wider than she was tall! And, let me tell you, that knight was really tall! Had to be at least 15 feet; she filled the whole living room!”

Jon blinked. Most of the stories from the drunk tank were less fanciful than this. He listened to the woman rant for several more moments, silently building a character profile in his mind. Slightly overweight, about 40, very high opinion of herself. Very talkative, will definitely run away with a conversation if she isn’t kept on a short leash. Not the sort of person who pays close attention to details; even while he’d been listening, they changed constantly. Jon eventually sighed and held up a hand.

“Ma’am, have you ever heard of the [TIPD] effect?”

“The what?”

“The tip-ed effect. Threat-induced perceptual distortion. It occurs when people are subjected to high levels of stress and can skew one’s perception of an event.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“No, I’m asking you if you’ve heard of [TIPD].”

“No,” she ground out through gritted teeth.

“Thank you,” Jon sighed. “As I mentioned, [TIPD] can distort or warp a person’s memory, blowing things out of proportion or exaggerating details multiplied by fear.”

“Are you calling me crazy?”

“No,” Jon sighed again. “What I’m saying is that it’s more likely that somebody in a suit of armor isn’t actually 15 feet tall, vampire witch or no. Is there anything else that you can tell me about the individuals that broke into your home?”

“Well, they didn’t actually break in,” the man said softly. The woman snapped her head up and glared at him.

“Harold!” She hissed, but the damage was done. Jon had already heard.

“Sir, thank you. What do you mean-”

“Nothing, officer!” She started to rant. But the good thing about being a [Detective], not an officer, was that he didn’t have to stomach her bullshit.

“Ma’am, thank you, but let your husband finish. This is an investigation, and I’m going to need his statement. As you were saying?”

“Well,” Harold started nervously, “It’s just that. They didn’t break in; they rang the bell. I was trying to take a nap, you see, and I’d been woken up by the bell only a couple of minutes before.”

“Was it the same person coming back?”

“Sorry, I don’t know. I didn’t hear anything; I was too out of it.”

“Hmm,” Jon frowned. “Ma’am, can you elaborate on this first person? Did the original caller return?”

“No,” she said irritably. “It was just some adventurer.”

“...I see,” Jon said, making some notes. Bias against adventurers. “No perceived relation.”

“I just said there wasn’t-”

“I heard you the first time, thank you,” Jon said. “The second caller. You answered the door. Do you have a looking glass? A bell-camera? Anything to notify you of who’s on the porch?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “We have a peephole-”

“And you didn’t think to look through it?”

“Well, no-”

“So you opened the door,” Jon said. “Am I to understand that’s when you saw–” he checked his notes “–a ‘witch’ and a ‘knight’. By your description, the knight was 15 feet tall.”

Jon glanced back at the front door.

“How did they fit inside? A person that tall, with standard human proportions, would have to be at least 4 feet wide, probably wider. They wouldn’t make it past the door…not without damaging the frame.”

“Well,” the woman muttered sheepishly, “That is….”

“Moving along,” Jon sighed. He wasn’t sure how much he could use from…unreliable witnesses.

“The…witch. You also said she was a vampire. Was it a vampire or a witch? Perhaps a vampire witch?”

“Does it matter?” The woman asked testily. “I don’t know; both! Why does it matter?”

Jon repressed a sigh.

“Because the small details are very important,” he explained, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered. “Homo sapiens vampiris, or what we sometimes call the [Vampires] seen in movies, aren’t real. They’re a specialized predatory subspecies of modern humans designed to prey on your fears. Homo sanguivorus, on the other hand, are Metahumans who cannot subsist on a diet lacking in blood. It used to be believed [Vampires] required human blood, thus the ‘blood-eating man’ genus, but in recent decades, it has been discovered that pig blood and gorilla blood serve the same purpose. It might interest you to know that a synthetic is being developed.”

Judging from her blank stare…it did not. A pity.

“And finally, we have homo homovorus, the ‘human-eating man’. That’s cannibalism, not a [Vampire]. Now, there are problems with all three. The first, usually, disintegrates in the sun.”

He looked up at the sky, still very bright, for emphasis.

“The second are just like you and me, and should not be treated any differently. Unless they have a secondary mutation for their Metagene, they don’t have super strength, and they can’t control you with their minds. They often suffer from hypoglycemia, so offer them fat-free candy in a pinch, if you’re having them for dinner.”

“And the last?” The woman asked snarkily. Jon wished he could snicker, but he had a hunch the woman wouldn’t get the joke.

“Chances are, if invited to your home, they would be having you for dinner.”

The woman gave him a blank stare, but he caught Harold silently barking out a single guffaw. He nodded in respect and moved on.

“So you opened the door to two unknown assailants, whom you’ve never seen before. Can you describe them?”

“I told you, a knight and a witch,” the woman seethed. Jon was about to give up; he couldn’t learn anything here. But Harold leaned forward and added something useful.

“The knight was tall; taller than you. Over 6 feet. Maybe 7? Hard to tell; I was sitting the entire time. But he was dressed, head to toe, in black armor. Actually, now that I think of it, he was less of a knight and more of one of those Power Rangers you used to see on TV. Except this was no costume. It looked real, and though I didn’t touch it, it felt real, if you understand?”

“I think I do,” Jon muttered. “Thank you.”

There were many ways a person could “feel” somebody else, and only a few had to do with touch. Aura, chi, spirit…yes, most of those terms were mumbo-jumbo, but there was a kernel of truth to just about everything.

“Then, if I may ask Mr. Harold, if you were sitting in the den, how did you see them?”

“Ah, as I said, Kathy let them in. They walked into the den, demanding to see the basement.”

“They…wanted to see your basement?” Jon asked, his eyebrow taking a vacation in his hairline. “You…let them in, and they demanded to see your basement.”

“They also broke my phone!” Kathy protested hotly. “I demand recompense!”

“Take it up with your insurance,” Jon said tiredly and mercilessly. Definitely not his problem. “Is there something in your basement that might…attract a vampire witch and a knight?”

Jon had to watch his words carefully. It would be very easy to accuse these people of…many things, really, and he didn’t want to sour the investigation. For instance, he couldn’t say…is there something illegal in your basement, for example. Thankfully, now that the investigation was here, it was harder to stop it than slamming the door in his face.

“No,” Harold said innocently. “Because we don’t have a basement.”

Jon paused.

“A knight and a vampire witch force their way into your home,” he began, double-checking his notes, “Demanding to see your basement. Which you don’t have. Do I have this right?”

Damn it all, it was long past 5 o'clock and he wasn’t allowed to drink.

“Before today, that is,” Harold admitted with a sigh. “I never knew we had a basement. There was a hidden staircase in part of the wall next to the water heater.”

Jon was halfway through writing that down when he looked up.

“What sort of water heater did you think you had that you didn’t notice a staircase hidden next to it?”

Perhaps he came out a little strong with that one. Harold and Kathy both shared a dubious look, but at this point, Jon was done.

“I think I need to see this for myself,” he said, standing up. “Thank you for your time; please leave your contact information with the [Lieutenant] in case we have further questions.”

Jon walked back to the house, nodding at the [Officer] as he passed. He paused on the porch, taking note of the frame. No damage, same with the door itself. Whoever these two people were— this mysterious black knight and the woman in a full ball gown —they didn’t force their way in destructively. Once the door was open, on the other hand, it would be easy for somebody 7 feet tall to overpower a portly 40-year-old woman. Once inside, the situation changed dramatically.

He instantly focused on the broken wall dividing the kitchen and the den. Several investigators snapped pictures, tagged bits of evidence, and went through the motions. He stopped long enough to see what they had, which, surprisingly, was nothing. Absolutely nothing, which was worrying. Everybody left something behind, and he hoped the lab analysis could sniff it out. No fingerprints, no tiny flecks of loose skin, no fallen hair. For somebody in a full-body power suit, if it was self-contained, that made sense. Nothing got through a hermetic seal. But a ball-gown-wearing-vampire-witch? With, he assumed amusingly, an impressive updo? Shit’s crazy; hair goes places.

The wall in question was a different story. While there still wasn’t anything of value to clue them into the perpetrators in this mess, there really should have been. Judging from how the drywall had been busted down and removed, it was caved in from the hallway and torn out piece by piece to make a bigger hole, presumably so the dress-wearer could fit inside.

…how did they manage that?

…and why would somebody put a spiral staircase into their home?

…just to seal it away?

This case wasn’t the only thing that didn't make a lick of sense…neither did this house. Or this neighborhood.

Inside the stairs, the walls were also broken. But the gouges and rough edges suggested the damage was done coming back up, not going down. Why? If they didn’t need to break the wall going down, why would they going up? Were they in a hurry and couldn’t be careful? Something to consider. Jon went down the stairs.

He almost wished he hadn’t.

The basement was dark, lit only by a flickering old lamp on its last legs. Jon immediately wrinkled his nose as a vile stench assaulted him, and as his eyes adjusted, he could tell the basement had seen better days.

It looked like a bomb went off.

Jon’s first impression was that this was the residence of a mad scientist. The remains of an operating table were strewn about the floor and he saw several surgeons’ tools like tiny pliers and scalpels. In the middle of the floor there was a sizable drain, possibly where that stench was coming from, as a dark fluid was slowly trickling into it. Over in the corner, several more [Investigators] were huddled.

“What do we have?” Jon asked, signifying his approach.

“Jon, you gotta take a look at this,” one of the men said, turning around. The [Officer] stepped aside to make room, and Jon’s brows furrowed deeply. The safe was one of those old-fashioned bank vaults rich people used when they wanted to feel extra secure about their goods in the face of the rising threat of organized crime. It had to weigh several hundred pounds, maybe a thousand, and it was only destroyed because it was slammed into the concrete.

For what purpose?

Judging from the 5-foot-long, severed tail that was wider than his thigh, Jon guessed it was to kill a big-ass rat. That liquid? Rotten blood.

But the worst was actually inside the vault.

Jon got as close as he could to the strange, blue substance that was starting to scab over like a glob of coagulating blood. No way was he, or anyone else down here, touching that without a hazmat suit.

“Boys are on their way,” the [Lieutenant] said, peering over his shoulder. “We’ve done a basic check.”

He handed Jon a folder containing a printout and a Polaroid. He wasn’t sure how much he could glean from the data analysis, so he looked at the picture first.

A cotton swab dipped into the blue goop, which was less solid than it was now.

“It was glowing when we first got down here,” the [Lieutenant] said grimly. “But that’s not all. Those are the readings we did with a handheld analyzer. That goop? Synthetic DNA modifier. Doesn’t get more illegal than that. Nothing recoverable, but…even if it was, who would make such a thing?”

“You’ve heard the rumors, right?” One of the other technicians called out. “That we’ve got a new Supervillain in town?”

“Yeah,” the [Lieutenant] frowned. “You believe in conspiracy theories like that? Next, you’re going to have one of those rooms where every surface is taken up by pinned notes connected by string,” he chuckled. Some of the other techs gave the first guy a hard time. “What do you think, boss?”

Jon looked at the photograph, the vault, and the severed tail. The safe– which shouldn’t be able to be lifted –the appearance of a potentially giant, armored Meta, and a Victorian larper with a penchant for theatrics. All of them under the same roof…somehow, they were connected.

“I think,” Jon said slowly, “We’ve got a case for your wall.”

¹

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